Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 1998/04/06
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]Eric Welch wrote: > > At 09:23 AM 4/6/98 -0800, you wrote: > > >people using negatives. I have watched meter swings through 2 stops > >differences depending on how much white sail or white hull in in the > > It's called manual metering. You take meter readings, and based on > experience, you can determine the exposure. Leave it on manual, and voila! > The exposure remains perfect. I've done it for years. Sorry, Eric, doesn't work. If I meter manually or program or whatever with reflected light, the exposures are all over the map, though usually dark. Like shooting a snow scene on reflected without compensation. With incident, I take a reading and maintain that or bracket around or snip test, depending on the circumstances. Yes, I can use spot and pick things like the sky or hand or or or, but it is guesswork, though pretty close. In my normal photographers paranoia, I do check constantly the differences between incident and reflected and always fight with myself about which to trust. Usually when I trust the camera, I am unhappy with the results. In fairness, during big storm here was out on sailboat race in ocean and forgot meter and used in camera meter and everthing was perfectly exposed--all 18% gray just like the day! > > And the fact that incident meters don't tell you about the reflectivity of > a subject might help in average situations, it won't help the photographer > who doesn't know when to vary from the exposure when the range of the light > is wider than the range the film can handle, and then they have to bias it > one way or the other. You I'm sure can do that. Truth. Like most technical things, photography takes a bit of art and a bit of craftsmanship and a bit of engineering. I use camera meter, and both the reflected and incident modes of my hand meters, and often even polaroid, and still I don't sleep well 'til I see the film (and sometimes don't sleep well AFTER I've seen the film) :) donal - -- Donal Philby San Diego http://www.donalphilby.com